1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to an optically readable data storage media, such as a photo compact disk (CD), which can be annotated by the user to indicate orientation and blanking of the photographs stored on the compact disk by marking the surface of the disk opposite the data storage surface and, more particularly, to a compact disk and scanning system which automatically indicates the orientation of the picture frames as the pictures are read out for display on a television type monitor.
2. Description of the Related Art
Compact disks and compact disk systems which store and display photographs on a conventional television using a compact disk player are available from a number of manufacturers among those being NV Philips and Eastman Kodak Company. The photo compact disk, as presently configured, is a non-erasable compact disk which can be written on with a high power laser by a film processing laboratory. The images stored on the compact disk are encoded in a surface or layer of the disk, coated with a transparent material, and read from the transparent side. The back side of the disk is conventionally printed with the logo of the processing laboratory, such as Kodak, which converted the film images into digital images and stored the images on the compact disk. All the disks appear to be alike. The user must insert the disk in the player and display at least some of the pictures stored on the disk to determine the contents of the disk. If the user wants to skip or blank certain picture frames, the compact disk player must be programmed by the user to eliminate these frames during the scanning process. When the disk is removed or the compact disk player is turned off, the information concerning which frames to eliminate is destroyed; that is, the frame elimination information is volatile and not carried on the disk. In addition, if the user wishes to rotate an image, he must first display the photograph and use either a remote control or controls on the disk player itself to manually rotate the image. This orientation information is also lost when the disk is removed, or the player is turned off.